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However compelling the immediate drama,
history's milestones are laid out in retrospective, not exactly
as things unfold. They are at best convenient markers for processes
which are more significant by far. If events are the hares of
history, flashy and flamboyant, processes are its tortoises,
obstinate, relentless -- and conclusive.
We live in the Age of the Picture, where almost everything has
to be made for TV, and even reality itself is not exempt from
adaptation. Because events lend themselves to graphic portrayal
so much better than processes, which are tedious, it is natural,
given our predeliction, that our dominant means of understanding
be shaped around events, not processes. More people get their
grasp of the world from watching 20 minutes of the evening news,
than by reading the newspaper. This is reality.
Chances are that this glacial truth will determine our destiny
more than 9-11 or the Iraq war. Indeed, it might even be the
cause of these things. If the Battle of Waterloo was won in the
playing fields of Eton, as the saying goes, the twin towers clattered
to the ground with the sound of phony debates in a hundred 'episodes'
of Meet the Press, Larry King Live or Face the Nation, playing
in the background on our TV sets. You cannot spend fifty years
replacing the paradigm of reading and discussing issues with
a culture of entertainement and sound-bite politicking (while
your government is playing with fire all across the globe) without
reaching a point where so much failure on so many fronts becomes
possible.
Alexander Cockburn in his latest piece has loosed some withering
scattershot in the direction of all those conspiracy buffs who
claim that there is more to 9-11 than meets the eye. Don't these
nuts know that even the best planned operations can go wrong,
he asks. One is tempted to echo the Reverend Al Shapton who
once said, "I hope Bush is lying. The alternative is too
scary to contemplate". If the notion of hundreds of people
having to be involved in a conspiracy is troublesome, how about
a conspiracy of millions? The cloak and dagger stealth of 9-11
is nothing as compared to the open machinations which brought
forth the Iraq War, launching it with a huge majority of public
support. That was a conspiracy of 290 million people, secure
in the knowledge that the bombs would be falling elsewhere, even
if a goodly number of them couldn't find Iraq on a map. Agatha
Christie, in her bestselling Murder on the Orient Express, was
far more modest.
And with opinion on the war now headed south, is it fair to
ask why such a huge majority has cratered? The 'principles' that
launched the war have not changed. Please don't say it is because
no WMD's were found. That was settled long ago, and well before
the 2004 elections, when we elected the same gang which carried
out all this, our eyes wide open. The cause of the current angst
and unease is that things have not gone swimmingly. What if they
had? I'm reminded of something I read in the wake of 9-11. When
some middle eastern spokesman went on television and expounded
at great length how 9-11 was immoral because Islam condemns violence,
a writer asked, "and what if Islam did not condemn violence,
would that make killing all these people right?". The sad
irony is that the politics and the population of a country founded
on principles are both bereft of any allusion to same when considering
their affairs. The implications of this truth underly all our
follies -- and our fates.
As the brilliant Joe Bageant wrote in Counterpunch recently (I
paraphrase), we are now so far along a haze induced by our decades-long
sniffings of consumerism that even the capacity to grasp and
discuss matters of principle have deserted us. All we can do
is talk personalities, and whom we can 'trust' (the fellow who
at least seems to believe the lies he tells). With apologies
to Kipling again,
And that was like arranging chairs
Upon a sinking boat,
Though he that told the better lie
Might get the larger vote.
Even when discussing 9-11, isn't it astounding that not single
politician has asked, five years on, why so many checks and balances
failed that day and after? All we can think of is how Giulianni
did this or that while Bush did not. What happens when personalities
trump principles? The quick answer, 9-11 -- and its aftermath.
For a quarter century at least we have steeped ourselves in what
Mahatma Gandhi termed one of the deadly social sins, Politics
without Principle. I don't even mean this in the conventional
sense, a la Tom Delay's gerrymandering or the Abramoff junkets.
I mean the pursuit of politics without articulation of principle.
A whole generation has thus been raised in a political atmosphere
that brooks no politics! A respectable philosophy has taken hold
that everything will be resolved by the market, and there is
no need for a state. The myopic view that all politics is local,
attributed to Tip O'Neill, obscures the fact that without grasp
of principles, it is impossible for anyone to transcend boundaries.
Having imbibed this lesson too well, all that the local politician
does upon ascending to larger realms is to apply the same understanding
to his new environs, that is to say, up-shifting from petty theft
to grand larceny. This is a tragedy. It is impossible to have
a national conversation when the population has lost the ability
to discuss principles. It is the same mindset which leads serious
politicians to argue that trade is a substitute for politics.
Is there a principle involved in 9-11? Is there a principle which
says that when a huge failure like 9-11 happens, someone should
be held responsible? Is there a principle that dictates that
when one accepts responsibility, it means paying a political
price (a resignation, a demotion). Is there a principle which
says that no matter what, freedoms are sacrosanct? Are not politics
arguments over principle? Isn't this the sort of discussion that
should dominate the political debate, and animate the presidential
race? When was the last time you recall a Democratic candidate
raise an issue of principle? Even in the last general election,
which ought to have been ideal for a discussion of principles,
Kerry, for all his wealth and education, turned out a true man
of the masses, a politician who could not argue principle. He
sought to run an entire race without asking if it was right to
invade Iraq.
Without principle, the national debate becomes little more than
a series of sitcom episodes. For showcasing his welfare reform
package, one president would make one lady in the audience stand
up during the state of the union, relaying her vignette. To show
that Katrina victims are being helped, another president has
some individual appear in a press conference with him, telling
his story. This is the level of politics in America, bereft of
principle, replete with anecdotes. News coverage is the same
way. If there is at all a principle somewhere in all this, it
has been that the market will take care of everything, including
politics. And in a perverse sense, it is.
It is this mindset which led our leaders (why blame Bush alone,
any Democract could have given voice to these) to call for shopping
and traveling as a way to combat Al Qaeda, instead of calling
upon the nation to sacrifice, share in the challenge of protecting
and preserving the nation. As with the Sherlock Holmes story
of the dog in the night, what was not done after 9-11 is as significant
as 9-11 itself. There has been no let up in energy consumption,
no call to sacrifice. There has been no action on border or port
security worth the name. Drift is the key, and we are morphing
into a third world kleptocracy where the leader thinks all is
well so long as his family, tribe or unit is profiting from his
reign. There is no challenge in principle, from the political
class, to the spying on citizens or detention without trial.
The author of the magic bullet theory now wants to turn the law
retroactively so that Bush will be exonerated for his warrantless
wiretapping.
The entire text of the Federalist Papers is about principles.
The entire political debate on TV is anecdotal. For the political
process and for the country, from 'anecdotage' to dotage is a
but a short step.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
